Making Sense of Christie's I/M Sale in London

Thirty-two percent of the material was unsuccessful, mostly in the 300,000-pound to 600,000-pound estimate range, where seven out of the 21 lots failed to sell. Only two works in the price range managed to achieve a hammer result above their high estimates. “We usually achieve a sale rate of 80 percent in the middle market,” Thomas Seydoux, Christie’s Paris-based co-head of the Impressionist art department said in an interview after the sale. “We need to fine tune our estimate.”

That was a theme Seydoux continued with Judd Tully:

“Was it a fantastic sale? No,” said Thomas Seydoux […]. “We have to be careful with the middle market. We’ve adjusted some reserves and the demand is there, but we still need to do more work.”

Reyburn adds these observations:

“The good things sold well and the market wasn’t fooled by things that shouldn’t have been there,” Ray Waterhouse, director of the London-based art advisers Fine Art Brokers, said in an interview. It will still be some time before sellers are confident enough to offer valuable Impressionist works at auction, Waterhouse said. “By November the market could free up. We’re not quite there yet. It’s still a buyer’s time.”

Eighty-three percent of the lots were bought by bidders from the U.K. and Europe, 14 percent from the U.S. and 3 percent from Asia.